The company still seems unaware of the issues surrounding what Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, calls a gift horse with "rotten teeth and bad breath." The Guardian noted that having enjoyed "an almost slavishingly admiring press", Google's response veered from unconvincing to apologetic to simply bemused."

"What seems to be missed is that the sheer scale of centralization of Google's service is frightening," writes Seth Finkelstein, who dubs it 'Total Information Awareness', after the DARPA data collection project led by convicted Iran Contra felon John Poindexter. "Every message you send, every message you receive, in ONE PLACE, tagged and sorted and indexed, with a history of who sent it to you and who you sent it to (traffic analysis!). And correlate it all with your web-searching, and your social network (Orkut) and your shopping (ads).

Also unresolved is the issue of why Google needs to retain your email after you've closed your account. We don't think it's because a company with dozens of PhDs can't find the rm command. ®